Abstract/Summary

Research in construction management is diverse in content and in quality. There is
much to be learned from more fundamental disciplines. Construction is a sub-set of human
experience rather than a completely separate phenomenon. Therefore, it is likely that there
are few problems in construction requiring the invention of a completely new theory. If
construction researchers base their work only on that of other construction researchers, our
academic community will become less relevant to the world at large. The theories that we
develop or test must be of wider applicability to be of any real interest. In undertaking
research, researchers learn a lot about themselves. Perhaps the only difference between
research and education is that if we are learning about something which no-one else knows,
then it is research, otherwise it is education. Self-awareness of this will help to reduce the
chances of publishing work which only reveals a researcher’s own learning curve. Scientific
method is not as simplistic as non-scientists claim and is the only real way of overcoming
methodological weaknesses in our work. The reporting of research may convey the false
impression that it is undertaken in the sequence in which it is written. Construction is not so
unique and special as to require a completely different set of methods from other fields of
enquiry. Until our research is reported in mainstream journals and conferences, there is little
chance that we will influence the wider academic community and a concomitant danger that
it will become irrelevant. The most useful insights will come from research which challenges
the current orthodoxy rather than research which merely reports it.